Biden Should Be Honest About Obama’s Record

This Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden will campaign in Green Bay. His job is not an enviable one. He’s tasked with the role of explainer, of feeling your pain. And unfortunately, in the Obama economy, there’s a lot of explaining to do – a lot of pain to feel.

Vice President Biden is known for being a straight shooter. Earlier this summer, he noted at a campaign event that for many Americans, the economy felt like “a depression.” That is, of course, true. For the 23 million Americans who can’t find work, this does indeed feel like a depression, and the fact that unemployment has hovered above 8% since the beginning of President Barack Obama’s term doesn’t help. Neither do sinking wages or anemic economic growth.

But in making that statement, Biden likely strayed from the Obama campaign talking points. After all, President Obama’s narrative is that it could be worse. That’s what he’s trying to convince voters this election cycle. He doesn’t want to wallow in the tough details of the present. He’d rather move “forward,” which is to say, away from his record.

We will hear a lot from Biden this weekend, but there is one thing we probably won’t hear from him: We won’t hear real plans to revive the middle class in this country, because he and the president have no plan. The Obama administration has exhausted its hand. They’ve done what liberal politicians do. They spent money we don’t have, they grew government (Obamacare), they wasted time and money (the “stimulus”), and inhibited energy independence (rejecting the Keystone pipeline).